Jan. 9, 2010

Article Published in South Bay Daily Breeze Jan. 9, 2009
Written by: Phil Collin

Drew Viney sat on the bench for 31 games last season, agonizing as his Loyola Marymount teammates lost 28 of those games.

All the 6-foot-5 transfer from Oregon could do was wait until the next practice session, which he could join as he waited to regain his eligibility after switching schools. But he could never get too far away from the warning he had received before he even decided to attend LMU.

Viney was on the phone with the head coach at the time, Bill Bayno.

Assistant coach Max Good was with Bayno, who handed the phone to his assistant.

"So he's like, `All right (expletive), it's not going to be easy,' " Viney recalled. "I'm on the phone like, `Who is this guy right now?' I don't know what he looks like. I knew he was old. I pictured like a Clint Eastwood type of character.

"He's like, `All right (expletive), once you get here, it's not going to be easy. I've got two things for you. I'm holding up two fists right now. This one right here is death. This one right here, this one's pain. You don't (mess) with death. And pain will hurt you too. So when you get in here, you've got pain and death waiting for you.' "I'm just like, `OK.' I don't know whether to laugh, I don't know what to do. I was on the other end of the line saying, `Uh, OK, I'll see you."'

Through events that only seem to happen at LMU, Good ended up replacing Bayno when the veteran coach left for health reasons.

Meanwhile, Pain and Death awaited when the 68-year-old Good was hired almost a year ago.

A 3-28 season? Hah. That's the easy part. Buying into the Good life was going to be a tough task for a team that ranks as the 330th of 347 Division I teams in terms of experience. No seniors, three juniors, the rest battling for their turn on the court.

Battling, in this sense, might just as well mean survival. But the group he inherited might as well be Marine recruits and they've already been through boot camp.

"If I had any of the coaches in my lifetime and I had to walk down a dark alley with any of my coaches, I would walk down that alley with Coach Good," junior guard Vernon Teel said. "He has this team's back that much."

The Lions have responded like no other team on the campus has in more than a dozen years.

They open West Coast Conference play tonight at Pepperdine with a 9-7 record, which includes road victories over Notre Dame and USC. It also includes a six-game win streak, their longest since the 1995-96 season.

LMU also has a three-game road win streak, something it hasn't done in the same season since 1991-92.

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